Song Premiere: Caroline Rose – ‘Tightrope Walker’

Much of Caroline Rose’s bio reads like a how-to guide on starting over. The 24-year-old singer-songwriter graduated college with a degree in architecture, but soon abandoned the trade altogether. Then, after being fired from two dead-end jobs, Rose took off in her van, taking in all that is America one back road at a time. A self-described “failed scholar and modern-day hobo,” Rose is gearing up to release her debut album I Will Not Be Afraid on August 19 via Little Hi! Records.

“Tightrope Walker” is a ruminating take on shuffling alt-country, affixed to an almost ominous organ lead. Written in rural Mississippi while visiting a friend, Rose said the song was inspired by a day spent at a poor, predominantly black school “Some of the teachers we’re telling me about how there are still segregated parades in a lot of places,” Rose said. “It was just a reality check, and that song just poured out when I was sitting down in the kitchen. All I could hear was the clock ticking and the hum off the telephone poles — it seemed like that’s what reality sounded like.”